hold tight
by twisted perfection
Summary: - "Her hair's windblown, the first time he's seen it loose. He thinks maybe he could just run up to her and scream at her, he's so mad. But he doesn't, he just stands there, she just stands there, and finally he speaks." ssfe for daniglitterlovexo! :


secret santa fic for: daniglitterlovexo

there weren't any prompts/pairings so i wasn't sure about it...  
hope it's alright :)

merry christmas (eve)!

* * *

**Hold Tight  
**

He loved watching her dance.

It was all in her face - the movements were there, of course, the flexibility, the skill... but her expressions were priceless. He could hear her intake of breath with every pirouette, _feel _her fingers stretching every single time she lifted them. When she danced, he was there with her, watching but with her at the exact same time. It wasn't something you could easily describe. It wasn't something anyone could easily accept.

Cam asks, "Yo man, where you been?"

Kemp grunts and gives him a fist bump. "Been a while, dude."

Josh doesn't say anything but he can read it in the way his dark brows furrow, in the way his eyes darken.

He shrugs his shoulder, makes up some half-assed excuses, gets himself off the hook before running off to her dance studio once again. What would the guys say if they found out that he spent most of his afternoons creepily stalking some ballerina? They'd call him a pussy, that's what. Pussy for not getting the nerve to talk to her, pussy for liking dance, pussy for hiding secrets from them.

And if there was one thing he was sure about, it was that Derrick Harrington was _not _a pussy.

x

One day, she told him to come out. Derrick wasn't sure how she had noticed him way back in the shadows, completely out of view from the mirrors pasted on all the walls. But he does it, hesitantly, step by step until he was standing right in front of her, she was standing right in from of him, big blue eyes drowning his thoughts into somewhere lost. She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, a hand planted on her hip.

"Who are you?"

Derrick faltered. "Nobody."

She clucked. "You're somebody, all right. How come you're always watching me? If I didn't know any better I'd think you were a dancer from another studio, trying to steal some of our moves before the Spring Festival. But the build of your body... it's not right." She flicked a quick look. "You play football, right? Broad shoulders... swimming, maybe?"

"Um, a little bit of both."

Nevermind that he had been the star quarterback of Westchester's Gators for three years in a row.  
Nevermind that he had worked summer jobs at the local beach as a lifeguard since he got his diploma.

"Right," she said coolly. "Well. Do you want to?"

"Do I want to, what?"

She sighed. "You're really a slow one, aren't you? Do you want to _dance_?"

Only it wasn't a question. And without even waiting for a reply, she spun on her heel and walked to the center of the expansive room. "Come on, then, Nobody. We've got a lot of work to do if you want to be good enough in time for the festival."

x

He was a terrible dancer.

His spins were a tad too fast, his movements a tad too clumsy. His toes were never pointed right and she found endless excuses to make him train by the barres.

"You know, for someone who wants it that badly, you're pretty terrible," she commented one day.

Derrick groaned. "That's the thing. I don't want it - you just - you dragged me into it!"

"Then go," she snapped. "If you don't want it, then I don't even know why I'm wasting so many of my afternoons training you instead of practicing."

"I - I -..." Derrick stammered. He didn't want to tell her the real reason he wanted to stay: for her.

She laughed. "That's what I thought."

x

Their first kiss is accidental and clumsy and absolutely perfect. She's putting on her jacket and he's tying up his shoes and then their eyes meet, blue into brown into blue into brown, and then he leans forward and she gives a little sigh, like _it's about time, _like _finally, _and it tastes something like mint and something like strawberries and really, really good. But it's too soon - one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi - and then she turns away, blushes like crazy and manages to say in a stern voice, "We'll forget that ever happened."

Derrick nods. "Right."

x

One month in, a terrible thing happened. Derrick came home to a strange, unnerving sight: his friends, Cam Josh Kemp, gathered around his living room, eating some chocolate cookies his mother had no doubt baked just a few minutes earlier. "Yo, what are you guys doing here?" he demanded, feeling like a little boy caught lying to his parents. "Don't you guys have like... practice or something?"

"Don't _you_?" Cam shot back. "Dude, where have you _been_? We haven't seen you for weeks except for school, and you're hardly there anyway."

"I've been busy," Derrick mumbled.

"Too busy to hang with us?" Kemp said.

Derrick sighed. "It's not that I don't want - there's stuff going on - you wouldn't believe what I've been... Nevermind."

Nevermind. Nevermind. Nevermind.

And the whole time, Josh didn't say anything, just looked quietly Derrick's eyes, translating every thought in his mind through his slow breathing.

"You guys have to go," Derrick said after a long while. "You guys have to go."

So they did.

x

She burst out into tears in the middle of practice. "This isn't going to work!"

Derrick is shocked, is confused, because he had thought that his spin was getting a lot better, but he rushes forward and puts his arm around her and soothes her, says, "Hey, don't worry... I'll practice some more. We've still got weeks. Don't worry about it..."

"It's not that, you idiot," she snaps at him. Her voice softens. "It's just that this isn't going to work. I don't know your name and you don't know mine and we're probably really, really different only I wouldn't know cause all we do is dance and sometimes I feel so lost - this isn't going to work."

He kisses her then, hungry and hard and longing for more. "It doesn't have to work," he whispers harshly when he pulls back. "It makes sense. But it doesn't have to work."

x

Next day, she's not there anymore.

Derrick goes into the studio expecting her there, cheeks flushed light pink from the warm ups, toes pointed to perfection, long blonde hair pulled backed into a tight bun. But there's nothing there. Nothing that he expects, anyway. In the middle of the huge room is a single white piece of paper on the ground, folded in half. Derrick walks toward it, almost too scared to make a sound, and picks it up. He opens it. Starts reading:

_Nobody,_

_I hope you know that this wasn't supposed to happen in the first place.  
I'm sorry if I hurt you and I'm sorry if you're mad at me.  
But I'm not sorry for anything that happened._

_This is how it should be.  
_

_Love,  
Somebody._

His mind is spinning and his feet are moving without his control, breaths going faster, he grabs his coat and runs outside, the note crumpled in his hand. He looks around, hot tears starting to sting his eyes, and more than anything he wishes that he had a name he could scream out, something tangible he could grab onto and cling onto and never, ever let go. Where are you? Where are you? I need you.

I need you.

And all of a sudden, there she is.

Her hair's windblown, the first time he's seen it loose. She's noticed him already, standing there in nothing but tights, ankle boots, and a loose black sweater. He thinks maybe he could just run up to her and scream at her, he's so mad. But he doesn't, he just stands there, she just stands there, and finally he speaks. "I can't lose you... Not right now." He runs a hand through his tousled hair. "My whole life, I don't know, I don't know what I've been doing. My friends only care about sports, my ex girlfriends only care about reputation, and when I'm with you it's like _none of that matters_. I can't let that go. I can't let you go."

She takes two steps closer to him, wraps her arms around his middle, kind of gives a laugh but she's crying anyway, tears spilling out of her eyes and onto his shirt. "IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou," she says, and he whispers it back to her, a million times, a billion times, whispers it into her hair and wishes the tears away. They just stand there holding each other, and even though it's cold and it's confusing, somewhere in the back of their minds, they know it makes sense, and sometimes that's all you can ask for.

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**ugh. confusing, right?  
and not very happy, either. oh well.**

**reviews please (: love you!  
**


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